Saga of Shadows 1: The Dark Between the Stars (69 page)

To help, he called his family into the admin module and introduced them to the boy. Maybe Elisa’s son and Arden would become friends. “This is Seth Reeves, our newest member of the team. Make him feel welcome.”

Londa seemed delighted. “We’ll take care of him. It will be so good for Arden to have someone close to his own age here.” She gave Seth a warm smile. “This will be different from Academ, but Arden enjoys it here. You will, too.”

Now that she had gotten what she wanted, Elisa seemed anxious to get back to work. “And you and I can be together, Seth. I’ll see you after my shift.”

Elisa followed Iswander to the medical module. Aelin lay on a bunk, connected to monitoring apparatus. The two staff doctors wore expressions of consternation.

Aelin’s face looked gaunt; his green skin had a more ashen color. His mouth hung slack, but it seemed to wear a hint of a smile, as if he understood something mysterious and incomprehensible. His eyes were open, staring, and glassy. But as soon as the two entered, he became lucid. He turned his head to face Iswander. “I have seen it!”

Elisa was skeptical. “What have you seen?”

The green priest jerked his head toward her. “Wonders that even my soul can’t contain. I hear the thundering thoughts.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “And I still see flashes behind my eyes, inside my soul.” Aelin tried to sit up, but the doctors had put him in restraints.

Iswander frowned. The poor man was likely insane—but the accident was the green priest’s own fault, not something the industrialist could be blamed for.

“I have a warning for you, Mr. Iswander! You are spilling the blood of the cosmos—and the shadow is coming.” Aelin struggled against his restraints.

Both doctors were worried. “We don’t know what to do, sir. Our treatment options are limited.”

The second doctor said, “He should be transferred to a larger medical facility, maybe taken back to Theroc where green priests can care for him.”

Iswander shook his head. “No, he stays here. Do what you can.” He paused, then added, “And you’d better sedate him. He’s delirious.”

O
NE HUNDRED AND SIX

O
SIRA
’
H

Osira’h awoke in terror. From the raw burning in her throat, she realized she must have screamed. In her mind’s eye she could still see the echoes of blackness, the images burned into her thoughts.

She sensed the strands of
thism
throughout the universe, a glorious web that strengthened and bound the Ildiran people—but in her nightmare it had become a tangled tapestry. She saw intersection points, frayed and weak strands beginning to turn black, darkening, tightening.

The Shana Rei could strike in more insidious ways than the gigantic hex cylinders they had used at Plumas. . . .

Before going to bed, Osira’h had spent an enjoyable hour with Prince Reyn. He was having a good day and seemed strong and engaged. Even though Osira’h watched him closely, she barely saw any signs of his illness.

They sat with a dozen quiet and fascinated Ildirans in a storyteller’s bowl, a small sunken theater ringed with seats. In the center, a mound of rough-cut orange fuel crystals glowed, shedding warm light on the audience.

Rememberer Dyvo’sh and the human scholar Anton Colicos told a story they had recently resurrected from the document crypts. Taking turns, Anton Colicos and Dyvo’sh talked about a small Ildiran splinter colony on Carii, which was due to have an eclipse. Ildiran astronomers had staked out a camp in the path of totality, an hour’s flight from the main city, ready to take measurements as the planet’s moon slid in front of the sun. The total eclipse lasted less than four minutes.

In that brief span of time, the Shana Rei emerged—manifesting out of the shadow and swallowing the astronomers. Even though the scientist kith remained in contact with the Carii colonists in the main city, the
thism
strands were knotted, then severed. And when the eclipse was over, everything in their camp was gone: astronomers, equipment, and records. The trees themselves were black and lifeless. . . .

The tale chilled the audience in the storyteller’s bowl. The story reminded Osira’h of her brother Gale’nh, all alone aboard the dark-shrouded
Kolpraxa
.

Reyn leaned close to her and said, “If the rememberers are searching old records to find useful information about the Shana Rei, what can we learn from that story to help us defend ourselves?”

“Maybe the lesson is that we should avoid eclipses.”

When they each retired to their quarters, Osira’h drifted off to sleep, thinking warm thoughts of how much she enjoyed being with Reyn. She had hoped to have dreams of Reynald. Instead, the blackness struck at Osira’h through her dreams.

She heard shouts and pounding at her chamber door before guard kithmen forced themselves inside. Still shuddering, she climbed to her feet, trying to push away the nightmare. One of the guards looked around, crystal sword drawn. “We heard you cry out—are you in danger?”

The words caught in her throat. Maybe they were all in danger, Ildirans and humans. But apparently the others hadn’t felt it. She drew a deep breath before answering. She gestured around her, trying to sound aloof. “I’m unharmed. As you can see, there’s no threat.”

Rod’h burst into the room, his eyes flashing. “Osira’h?” He was normally haughty and confident, but she saw a gray tinge of fear on his face. With her enhanced telepathy, she could feel his thoughts reverberating through the
thism.

“Yes, I felt it,” she said. “I saw darkening strands of
thism.
I saw the network tangled and broken.” She thought about the perfectly normal Ildirans who had suddenly turned on her mother during the birthday procession, trying to assassinate her.

“I think the Shana Rei are poisoning the
thism
,” Rod’h said. “They’re trying to attack Ildirans from the inside, by striking at the very thing that binds us together.” He straightened. “It may be up to us again, dear sister, to find a way to fight it.”

“I’m worried about Gale’nh,” she said. “If he felt it too . . .”

The guard kith accompanied them as they hurried to their brother’s quarters in the Prism Palace. Gale’nh was awake. Ever since his rescue from the
Kolpraxa
, he had been wan and pale, but now he looked full of dread.

Their warrior sister Muree’n stood next to him, breathless. “I came to protect Gale’nh. I had the nightmare too. I knew something was wrong.”

Osira’h looked at her siblings. “We must see the Mage-Imperator—all of us.”

They found Jora’h in his contemplation chamber where the walls of crimson crystal let in a dark and brooding light. Blazers illuminated the private chamber, but the Mage-Imperator was alone with his thoughts, his concerns.

Seeing how haggard and weary her father looked, Osira’h wondered if he had experienced the terrible dread as well. Was he afraid to sleep? With the thoughts of all Ildirans thrumming through his mind, he, too, must have been sensitive to the shadow, the darkening strands of racial telepathy. Somehow the Shana Rei had infiltrated their racial network.

“Father, we all felt the nightmare,” Osira’h said.

“Nightmare . . . or maybe it was a message,” Rod’h interrupted. “The
thism
is growing dark. The Shana Rei are looking for weak points.”

Jora’h lifted his head, squared his shoulders. “
I
am the Mage-Imperator.
I
am the heart of the
thism.
I need to defend our race against all threats.”

In a rough voice, Gale’nh said, “We know the stories of how the Shana Rei attacked—not only by physically destroying worlds but also through subtle and insidious ways. How can Ildirans be strong enough to fight it?”

The Mage-Imperator rose to his feet. “Come to the rooftop. I need to be in the sunlight when we speak of this.”

They followed him to the top of the highest minaret tower where mirrors and lenses bathed the deck in rainbows. Jora’h sounded tired as he confessed, “I thought I was just experiencing nightmares, but they may be a manifestation of a more tangible darkness . . . something inside of me.”

“If it is inside of you, then it is in all Ildirans,” Muree’n said.

Gale’nh added, “You are the Mage-Imperator. You are the soulfire of our race.”

“And I am—I
must
be—strong enough to save us all,” Jora’h said.

Osira’h watched her father, listened to his voice, observed the determination in his eyes. He raised a hand to wipe the perspiration from his brow. For an instant—just a startlingly quick flicker—the veins on the back of his hand were highlighted by a tracery of black, then they returned to normal.

She grabbed his hand, touched his skin with her fingertips, but she could find no sign. He smiled at her, squeezed her hand, and Osira’h wasn’t sure she had seen anything at all.

O
NE HUNDRED AND SEVEN

T
OM
R
OM

She was out there. He knew it.

Tom Rom extended his ship’s sensors, scanned for lingering exhaust particles or, more likely, residue leaking from the damaged engines. He knew he had scored at least one solid hit during the chase.

The
Proud Mary
was limping along, and the desperate pilot maneuvered as best she could, making suicidal moves and surviving them. The woman on that plague ship must be an extraordinarily talented flyer—or maybe just desperate enough to have no inhibitions or limitations.

Tom Rom would have admired that if she wasn’t causing him so much trouble.

Under normal circumstances, she would never have been able to elude him, but during the pursuit, Tom Rom was startled when his superior ship failed to respond as expected. His engines were sluggish; several minor systems failed, while others lit up with alarm indicators.

Then he realized his disadvantage. He had made only stopgap fixes after the Roamer pirates damaged his ship on Vaconda. Ideally, he would have had all repairs completed back at Pergamus, the engines primed, power blocks recharged, hull integrity checked. But he hadn’t taken the time to restore his ship to full operational status.

After hearing the news of the Onthos space city and the fascinating plague, he had raced off too quickly. No, he thought, not
too quickly
, since he’d arrived just in time. Even an hour later, and the
Proud Mary
would have been long gone with the only remaining vestiges of the fascinating microorganism.

Even so, his ship wasn’t ready for this. His systems weren’t capable of the full power he needed, which was a disappointing setback.

Now his ship prowled among the asteroids. He doubted Orli Covitz had any plan; she was simply reacting, making random course changes, trying to hide. She was good at that. Tom Rom drifted along, his ship’s systems alert for any trace, and he also kept his
eyes
open. Over the years, he had found that his own senses were just as reliable as artificial sensors. He had good instincts.

During the first chase, the desperate woman had jettisoned and detonated an ekti canister to distract him. The maneuver, though expected, had been effective. The soup of gases and reflective bodies in the expanding cloud of debris gave her camouflage among the roiling energy signatures. The flash from her exploding fuel canister had blinded him just long enough to let her dive into that briarpatch, and she’d hidden there like a rabbit, waiting. A smart move.

But Tom Rom was smarter. Sooner or later she would have to come out.

While he had hung there in silence, waiting for her to venture out of hiding in the debris cloud, he scoured his databases to learn what he could about his quarry. According to records, the
Proud Mary
was a trading vessel piloted by a pinch-faced woman named Mary Coven who always traveled alone. That image didn’t match the younger woman he had seen on his screens. Digging deeper, he found a recent notice that the piloting registration had been transferred to someone named Orli Covitz, and this flight must have been one of her first missions. An extraordinary way to start . . .

Hiding in the debris cloud, Orli Covitz lasted six hours longer than he had estimated, but he eventually saw the
Proud Mary
reactivate and ease out of the field. Covitz would be cautious, watching for any sign of him, but he had to let her get far enough from the debris cloud that it was no longer a viable hiding place. Then he set off in pursuit.

He opened fire without warning, hoping to cripple her ship so he could force his way aboard. All he needed was a blood and tissue sample, easy and efficient, but in the event that Orli refused to cooperate, he could take his sample with a hatchet, if necessary.

He chased the
Proud Mary
into the asteroid field, trying to match her maneuvers. She slipped through a group of tumbling rocks, but Tom Rom’s ship was larger and less graceful. A rough chunk of rock caromed off his hull; the shields were sufficient to protect him, but the ship went into a spin.

By the time he reoriented himself, Orli Covitz had lost herself among the rubble. He continued his pursuit, picking what he thought was her most obvious route. He tried to think the way she would think, see the opportunities as she would see them.

Unfortunately, he guessed wrong.

Maybe the disease was affecting Orli Covitz’s brain, and she was becoming increasingly irrational. Her flight pattern was erratic. When he finally gave up and doubled back, he studied her path, trying to discern a pattern. He picked up his own trail, but it didn’t lead him back to the
Proud Mary.
Tom Rom felt himself growing angry, but that could not be allowed. Zoe was counting on him.

His greatest fear was that Orli would just let herself die, or that she would self-destruct the ship—before he could get a sample of the disease. Then Zoe would lose that valuable item for her library, perhaps a vital organism.